Declarations of loyalty to David Cameron from Adam Afriyie were undermined by an admission he had discussed the “long-term future of the party” with other Tories. The hapless Windsor MP may be more stalking donkey than stalking horse but his wealth, reportedly as large as £100m, buys him clout. He might never wear the crown, but one so rich could finance a coronation. Which office did my snout see Afriyie popping in and out of in the weeks before the great plot was publicly alleged? None other than the Commons den – an office along a corridor called the North Curtain, a short cut from the hairdressers – of Dr Liam Fox. Afriyie may not harbour leadership ambitions but I’m not sure the same could be said of the right-wing former defence secretary.

The “Nazi stag party” MP Aidan Burley continues to confound colleagues on the Commons work and pensions committee with his poor grasp of government programmes. Hurly-Burley interrupted a discussion of Disability Living Allowance with a question about Employment and Support Allowance. My informant said it was rather like raising India during deliberations on South America. The more I hear about Burley, the easier it is to grasp how he failed to understand that an SS uniform would cause offence. I suspect he isn’t overwhelmed with bids when pub quiz teams are formed.

Interesting to note how peers’ attendance in the House of Cronies is going up with their expenses. A parliamentary answer disclosed that the average daily turnout in 2010 was 397 unelected lawmakers, who claimed a mean (in the arithmetical sense) of £270. Fast-forward to 2012 and the typical attendance was up to 488 and the average payout had risen to £287. Meanwhile, Lords staff are heading for their fourth successive annual pay freeze.

Food for thought after Ed Miliband and Mervyn King got into a stew by claiming that Brendan Barber would be going on a Jamie Oliver cookery course after he retired from the TUC. The Labour leader and the governor of the Bank of England, I gather, both got the wrong end of the ladle at the general sec’s farewell party. Barber is no union chef. The recipe for confusion is blamed on a half-boiled rumour.

The Pizzagate photograph of the upper-crust Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson enjoying a Davos dinner on the eve of hard cheese for the British economy has been labelled, as William Cash notes on page 13, the Bullingdon Club on tour. Despite its familiarity, the idea that the three most powerful Tories were members of the same Hooray Henry society at Oxford retains the ability to startle. I’m told Boris boasts privately that his £389,625, including Torygraphmoney, exceeds the salaries of Dave and George combined. They’re not all in this together.